Marketing Software Group Blog

High-tech gadgets for better or worse have taken us to the next level of TSA screening. We can now identify a passenger’s quickened pulse and labored breathing, to set off warnings that he may be a terrorist. A simple indication that the skin temperature is rising, may set TSA crews into action prompting an invasive interrogation. Is he a terrorist? Or is suffering a simple fear of flying?

The Department of Homeland Security has recently invested in biometric sensing equipment, trying to forecast and identify criminals before they strike. However there are many critics that maintain that the methods are flawed, subject to mistakes,and potentially invasive to innocent travelers.

Proponents of the new equipment claim it is fast and portable, measuring vital signs similarly as a polygraph would, with a single major difference. It doesn’t require wires to be physically connected to the person of interest. That makes scanning covert and quick as the subject merely needs to walk by a set of cameras.

The TSA thus far has trained more than 2,000 personnel to observe passengers as they walk through airports, questioning those who seem oddly nervous. The system would be portable and fast according to the project manager who envisions machines that scan people as they walk into airports, train stations or arenas. Those flagged by the machines would be interviewed in front of cameras that measure minute facial movements for signs of attempted deception.